


the perfect halo of gold hair and lightning

by jintimacy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, M/M, Minor Angst, Pining, Post-Timeskip, its actually 6+1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27866873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jintimacy/pseuds/jintimacy
Summary: “Are you okay?” Tsukishima asks, looking at Tobio through his eyelashes. They are light colored and straight, and if Tobio were a more poetically inclined person, he might think that they look like threads of spun gold.No, Tobio wants to say.Put your glasses back on. I can’t breathe.
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 49
Kudos: 286





	the perfect halo of gold hair and lightning

**MAY 2017**

Maybe he should scream. Or throw up. Or neither. He wants to do both.

“Are you okay?” Tsukishima asks, looking at Tobio through his eyelashes. They are light colored and straight, and if Tobio were a more poetically inclined person, he might think that they look like threads of spun gold.

As luck would have it, Tobio is not a poetically inclined person, a fact easily confirmed by looking at his literature grades all throughout high school, so he thinks that they look like hay. Straw. Whatever. He’s not a farmer. 

Then he remembers that Tsukishima asked him a question, and that questions are usually meant to be answered, and that he hasn’t answered this answerable question yet. 

_No_ , Tobio wants to say. _Put your glasses back on. I can’t breathe._

He opens his mouth. Tsukishima blinks. His hay-blond eyelashes flutter like the thin pale wings of a moth. 

He throws up.  
  
  
  
  


**JUNE 2012**

Tsukishima is looking at him like he’s stupid. Maybe he is. He’s gotten this question wrong three times already. 

“Let’s take a break,” Tsukishima says tiredly. 

“Okay,” Tobio says, equally as tiredly. He puts his pencil down. His brain feels like one of those ancient computers that look and act more like hunks of metal dressed up as cardboard boxes than any properly functioning machine. It feels heavy and incompetent in his skull. 

Tsukishima uses the respite to crack his knuckles one by one. His pinkies pop quieter than the rest. His thumbs pop the loudest. 

Tobio cracks his neck once, twice, exhales to relax, looks back up at Tsukishima to find him thumbing circles into his temples. His glasses are folded neatly on the table. His eyes are shut. 

His eyes are shut. 

His eyes are open. 

Tobio’s clunky old computer brain buzzes and whirs and clicks and screeches and the wires are all tangled up and broken and sparking like they want to start a fire. 

As it turns out, they don’t need to start a fire, because the fire has already started itself, eating the swampy depths of Tobio’s rib cage alive. The smoke clogs up his throat, turns it to crumbling ash. 

“Stop staring at me.”

“I’m not,” Tobio says. He tastes soot and heat and his tongue has transformed into a hunk of stupid metal. 

“Yes, you are.”

Has Tsukishima always had eyelashes like this? Long and laying straight from his waterline; the light filtering through the window casts dainty shadows on his cheeks that Tobio finds himself unable to look away from. 

Tsukishima clicks his tongue. It’s a quiet sound but it instantly flips a switch in Tobio’s buzzing brain; the noise screeches to a halt, leaving only the ghosts of it ringing in his ears. 

“King,” he says. 

As if of its own accord, Tobio’s face hurtles towards the flimsy plastic table and slams into it with a deafening rattle. 

Maybe this isn’t his brightest moment. 

“What—” Tsukishima makes a faint, alarmed noise. “What the _hell_.”

This is not his brightest moment.  
  
  
  
  


**JULY 2013**

Tsukishima, the asshole, ditches them after dinner to practice with Akaashi from Fukurodani. Hinata exclaims that he wants to go, too, but Kenma tugs at his sleeve and reminds him in a soft, pained voice that he promised he would help him practice with Lev. 

“I’m going to practice with Akaashi-san,” Tobio declares once he’s finished with serving practice, picking up his water bottle. Yamaguchi nods. Hinata serves a ball into the net. Tobio steps out of the gym. 

It takes Tobio ducking into and retreating from far too many gyms before he finally locates Akaashi from Fukurodani and Tsukishima the asshole. They’re standing close together by the net in an otherwise empty gym. 

What the fuck are they doing, he thinks. 

“Hello, Akaashi-san,” he says instead. They jump apart and stare at him with panicked eyes like they’ve been caught committing some kind of cardinal sin, like kicking a stray cat off a ledge or cheating during a volleyball match. 

“Can I join your practice?” he asks. He hopes Akaashi has done neither of those things. He wouldn’t put it past Tsukishima to kick a cat. 

“Oh,” Akaashi says. His eyes are less wild now. His face starts to recede to its natural color. “Yes, of course. Come on in.”

Tsukishima’s face is as rigid as stone, if stone was able to blush a splotchy red and spasm in irritation. “Why are you here,” he spits. His eyes twitch, like they can’t decide between narrowing or widening. His eyelashes catch the light and turn dusty white. 

Tsukishima is the stupid one here, Tobio realizes. He is holding his sports glasses in one hand and the hem of his sweat-damp shirt in the other and he is standing by a volleyball net in a volleyball gymnasium during a volleyball training camp and he is asking his volleyball teammate why he is here in this volleyball gymnasium. 

“To practice,” Tobio says, Tsukishima’s stupidity wrinkling his brow, “with Akaashi-san. Just like you.”

Tsukishima’s face folds into something ugly. His eyes glint something furious. He spits something that sounds like a curse and snaps his glasses back onto his face and it’s only then that the backlog of thoughts, left to queue at the base of Tobio’s skull, clears and everything sharpens into focus. 

When unobstructed by his glasses, Tsukishima’s eyes are actually really pretty.

Heat prickles up the length of his jaw as the realization roughly jostles his brain. 

Dusty white eyelashes cement their place in his mind.

Okay, so. Maybe they’re both stupid.  
  
  
  
  


**MARCH 2014**

Tsukishima and his stupid dusty white eyelashes make a reappearance at the third years’ graduation, where Nishinoya does a final handstand on Hinata’s shoulders and Ennoshita drags Yamaguchi into a hug and Tanaka claps Tsukishima on the back so hard he wheezes and stumbles forward and his glasses slide off the bridge of his nose. 

“Whoops! Sorry, Tsukishima!” Tanaka says, not looking sorry at all. 

“It’s fine,” Tsukishima grumbles, even though it’s not. He’s a polite piece of shit. 

He tugs his glasses off and meticulously wipes them with the hem of his shirt. The sun casts yellow-white planes of light along the side of his face. His eyes turn to molten light; his eyelashes, sugary white, tinged the barest hint of gold at the edges. 

Tobio looks away. His stomach has decided that now is the most opportune time to practice its gymnastics and does several violent cartwheels and somersaults in succession. 

Distantly, he registers Hinata shouting about ice pops and bike races. Nishinoya shouts back with something about shaved ice and airplanes. 

Tobio looks back. Tsukishima is tucking a lock of sugar-white hair behind his ear. 

His stomach does a frenetic balance beam routine. He forcibly swallows it all down. 

  
  
  
  
  


**JANUARY 2015**

Yachi is pissed because her fingers are frozen stiff. Tsukishima is pissed because his scarf makes his glasses fog up every ten seconds. Tobio is pissed because he’s gotten a _future curse_. What a wonderful start to the new year.

“What the hell,” he says. Hinata laughs at him. 

“Count your blessings, Kageyama-kun!”

As it turns out, Tsukishima also has a bad fortune. He tells them this while tugging his glasses off for the seventeenth time today and delicately wiping the condensation from the lenses. 

The biting cold stains his pale cheeks a ruddy red. Just under his left eye sits a stray eyelash. Tobio wants to brush it away. 

“Let’s go,” Tsukishima says, gesturing to the tree. He puts his glasses back on. Tobio nods. 

“I got a future curse,” Tobio tells him, reaching for an empty spot on the tree. His fingers are hardened from the cold. He can’t tie the fortune properly. 

He huffs and tries again. 

“Oh my god, just give me that,” Tsukishima snaps after Tobio’s third failed attempt. He snatches it from Tobio’s icy grip and ties it with shivering fingers. 

“What did you get?” Tobio asks. Tsukishima shoots him a look as chilling as the wind and starts walking. 

“I got a future curse, too.”

Tobio skips a little to match his brisk pace, hums in acknowledgment. He should say something, maybe, but he’s never been one for small talk. 

“I don’t know why,” Tsukishima grumbles, pausing to pull his glasses off once more, “I got a _future_ curse. This right here is a curse.” He carefully wipes down his fogged up glasses. 

“You could just _not_ wear them.”

Tsukishima squints at him like he’s the slowest dimwit to have ever walked the earth. Tobio regrets ever opening his mouth. “I wouldn’t be able to see,” he says slowly, with the intention to make Tobio feel stupid. It works, just a little. Tsukishima has always been good at that. 

(Another part of Tobio, smaller, quieter, but more incessant, is screaming itself sore. Who _the fuck_ allowed him to look Like That, it’s yelling. How Dare He Look Like That.)

“There’s not much you need to see here,” Tobio says, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. His face feels so hot it’s almost distracting. “We’re just going back home, anyway. It’ll probably be easier to not wear them than to keep wiping them down.”

Tsukishima sighs loudly and tucks his glasses into his pocket before walking back to their friends. 

Tobio stares at pretty, blond eyelashes and counts this as a win.  
  
  
  


**DECEMBER 2016 / JANUARY 2017**

“How long has it been since the King showed up to a party?”

“It’s not my fault I was _busy_ ,” Tobio says. He really has been busy, what with the Olympics and all. He doesn’t bring this up more than is necessary, because his friends all know this and keep asking him if any players hooked up with each other. 

_I don’t know_ , Tobio maintains, even though he walked in on Danvers from the USA getting his brains sucked out through his dick by one of the three Parks from South Korea. And Acosta from Argentina getting railed by Guillemette from France. And— well, if he went through all of them we’d be here for a while. 

_I don’t know_ , he says, because he does not want to see another bare ass ever again. Nor does he want to think about it. 

“That guy from England, what was his name?” a round faced girl says. Her name is either Something Izumi or Izumi Something. She’s Yachi’s friend from college and is very Loud. “The guy with the mohawk and the small eyes.”

“Lancaster?”

“Yeah, him!” Her eyes light up. “He definitely hooked up with someone. He looked so horny all the time.”

“Maybe he looked horny all the time because he didn’t hook up with anyone,” Yachi muses. Yamaguchi laughs giddily like she’s unearthed a secret of the universe. Love is one hell of a drug. 

Something Izumi Something considers this, her big eyes going even bigger. Yachi has not unearthed a secret of the universe. She’s just sober enough to make the connection. But Izumi says, _I didn’t even think of that_ in a hushed, shocked voice.

Tobio tries to drown his memories in cheap beer. 

“Did _you_ hook up with anyone, your Highness?” Tsukishima’s voice rings loud in his ear. 

Why is his voice so loud? The answer hits him right in between the eyes when he turns and realizes that Tsukishima’s face is situated a mere four point seven centimeters away from him or something ridiculous like that, close enough that Tobio can see the bits of ashy blond stubble on the corners of his jaw. His jaw, sharp and pointed enough to cut teeth. 

He wants to touch that, and then some. He would bleed, probably. He would bleed and like it. 

How much more would Tobio bleed if he kissed that razor sharp jaw? If he kissed Tsukishima on his pink wet lips? If he—?

Stop thinking. Stop thinking Right The Fuck Now, Kageyama Tobio, or you’ll cut your own chest open and die without ever having touched that goddamned chiseled jaw. 

Tobio laughs too loudly in Tsukishima’s stupid alcohol-flushed face. “Why the fuck would I.”

“Didn’t you want to?” Yamaguchi asks from his perch on Yachi’s lap. Either Yachi is stronger than she looks or Yamaguchi weighs less than he looks. Both, he thinks. 

Tobio fires off an answer without thinking. “Not anyone _there_.”

The mistake cuts through the fog of alcohol in his skull, sharp and sour like vinegar. _Oh shit_ , he thinks. He shouldn’t have said that. 

“Anyone _there_?” Yachi and Yamaguchi echo at once. 

“Who do you want to hook up with, then?” Tsukishima asks with all the glee of a man who’s gotten everything he’s desired in life put squarely into the center of his palm. “If no one at the Olympics, then who?”

Tobio’s stupid alcohol-and-then-some-flushed face folds in regret and mortification. “No one.”

“What the hell, _tell us_ !” Yamaguchi shouts. “ _Kageyama_! Do you like someone!”

“No!” Tobio shouts. 

“Who do you like!” Yachi shouts. 

“No one!” Tobio shouts. 

He’s only shouting because Yamaguchi is shouting and Yamaguchi is only shouting because said he didn’t want to fuck anyone in the Olympic village and this entire conversation about Olympic village hookups wouldn’t be happening if he hadn’t started playing volleyball and he wouldn’t have started playing volleyball if his grandfather wasn’t a volleyball coach so clearly, yes, this is his grandfather’s fault. 

“This is my grandfather’s fault,” he bemoans. “I miss my grandfather.”

“You’re drunk,” Tsukishima announces. His voice is much too loud again. He must be too close again. Tobio’s heart thuds like a drum in his ears. 

“Fuck you,” Tobio says, just to get the last word. He stands up. He should get some water, try to sober up before the clock strikes midnight and they’re thrust into the new year. 

He shuffles to the kitchen and grabs himself a glass of water. He plops back on the floor next to Tsukishima and promptly spills half of it down the front of his shirt. Tsukishima looks at him like he’s stupid. 

Maybe he is stupid, if this pale, blond beanpole of a man gets under his skin and stays there like an incessant itch more than anyone else in the world, including Miya Atsumu and Oikawa Tooru _combined_ , a feat previously thought only capable by the gods themselves. 

“Shut the hell up,” he says. 

Tsukishima blinks at him, all sickly sweet like artificial sweetener. Tobio almost gags. 

“I didn’t say anything.”

  
  
  


There is but a single minute to midnight when Tobio’s heart falls out of his mouth. 

Someone has accidentally spilled their drink on Tsukishima’s face. He has to wipe it clean. And to do this, of course—

Tsukishima takes off his glasses.

That’s how it always happens. Tobio shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but his heart is an untamable thing and makes his head spin like he’s done thirty-four backflips in succession. Although in this case, it might be the alcohol. 

They’re in the kitchen. Tobio is sipping on a glass of water to clear his head. Tsukishima is washing his hair in the sink. 

“You’re gonna catch a cold,” Tobio says helpfully. 

“Whatever,” Tsukishima says uncharacteristically. He’s either too drunk or too tired to care, most likely both. 

He grabs a few paper towels and begins patting his hair dry. Tobio grabs some more. “Let me help.”

“What? No,” Tsukishima says, more out of habit than anything. He makes no attempt to push Tobio’s hands away. 

A boy with pink hair had been talking to Yachi about his childhood pet cat named Strawberry who brought a baby rabbit into the house. He hadn’t gotten a chance to listen to the rest of the story because someone spilled their drink on Tsukishima’s face and he came running into the kitchen with a wet face and his eyelashes dark and clumped together and his glasses dangling from his fingers and Tobio had very nearly spat his heart out onto the cold kitchen floor. 

There’s five minutes to midnight. 

Yachi and Pink Hair are still talking. Tobio doesn’t know what happened after the cat brought the baby rabbit into the house. Right now, the story is a distant memory. 

Right now, he has a wad of paper towels in his hands and he’s patting Tsukishima’s hair dry and Tsukishima is blinking his eyes open and Tsukishima is blinking his eyes open and Tsukishima is blinking his eyes open and

“Your hands are really warm.”

Tobio’s hands are only touching Tsukishima through the wet paper towels but are apparently hot enough for Tsukishima to notice— and dislike? 

His wrist jerks. He pulls his hands away. Tsukishima frowns. 

“Why’d you stop? My hair is still wet.”

“Oh.”

Tobio brings his hands back up to Tsukishima’s head. _Pat pat pat_ s and _rub rub rub_ s the wet away. 

They keep at it for a few more minutes, but Tsukishima’s hair is as dry as it’ll get. They toss the paper towels in the trash. Tsukishima’s face still remains glasses free. 

“Your eyelashes are wet,” Tobio says impulsively. 

Tsukishima blinks. His wet eyelashes are shiny. “Okay,” he says. “So?”

There are two minutes to midnight.

Adrenaline, alcohol, whatever the reason, Tobio confesses: “They look pretty.”

Tsukishima’s eyebrow does a little twitch. His mouth goes a little lopsided when he smiles. There is a stray eyelash stuck to his flushed cheekbones just under his left eye. Tobio takes all of it in and forgets how to breathe. 

There’s three point two centimeters or something equally as ridiculous in between them. How did they get this close? Why are they this close? Why is Tsukishima looking at him like that, like he wants to eat him?

“Do you want to eat me?” Tobio asks. 

“What?” A certain fondness has developed in Tobio’s chest for that squinty eyed bemusement that so often graces Tsukishima’s features.

“Never mind.”

Tsukishima looks and looks and looks at him. “Let me kiss you,” he says. 

Tsukishima’s voice is soft at the edges and nearly unrecognizable. Tobio’s brain bursts into glittery rough static. He wonders if he’s dreaming. 

“What? You’re not dreaming.” 

“Oh.” Did he say that out loud?

“Let me kiss you.”

Tobio looks and looks and looks back. His nerves are buzzing. Tsukishima’s eyes look like lightning and make his chest seize. He pukes out his heart and says, “Okay.”

There’s a single minute to midnight and Tobio has let his heart crawl its way up his throat and catapult out of his mouth and Tsukishima’s fingers are cool and damp against his nape. His mouth is hot and wet against his own. His pretty eyelashes brush against Tobio’s cheek. 

Tobio presses trembling fingers to Tsukishima’s diamond-hard jaw—

“— _3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!_ ”

—and bleeds out. 

  
  
  
  
  


**MARCH 2017**

They don’t talk about it. 

That’s not true. They do. Tobio says _I like you so much_ because he hasn’t got a morsel of pride left in his body and Tsukishima says _Oh_. 

Later, Tsukishima says _Sorry, I don’t feel the same way_ and Tobio looks into lightning-sharp eyes and feels his nerves burn and shrivel into fragile shells of themselves and says _Okay, that’s fine_. 

Future curse, indeed. 

  
  
  


“I need advice,” Tobio announces in the locker room one morning, “on how to get over a rejection.”

“You liked a girl?” Heiwajima asks. His eyes are wide in disbelief. 

“No.” Tobio pauses. “He— He’s a friend from high school,” he says, because it’s the easiest way to describe their relationship. They’re not friends, not really. And now even less so, because Tobio just had to go and let his heart roll off his tongue. 

“Is it Hinata Shouyou?” Ushijima asks.

Tobio shakes his head and tells them it’s _Tsukishima Kei_ , who is a college student and Sendai Frogs hopeful. None of them know who he is. Tobio doesn’t know if that makes this easier or harder. 

“You could try dating around,” says Sokolov. 

Tobio does not want to try dating around. It’s emotionally draining and he does not want to parade around his bruised heart in a glass display case for everyone to see. 

“I don’t want to try dating around,” Tobio says. 

“You could pick up a new hobby,” Romero suggests. 

This is a viable option. This does not require showing off his stitched up mess of a heart in a glass display case. 

“Okay.”

  
  
  


He picks up knitting. 

First he makes a scarf. It’s a light yellow and an ugly, lumpy mess because he was too lazy to fix his mistakes. It’s a practice scarf. Sue him. 

Then he makes another scarf. It’s a light yellow and less of an ugly, lumpy mess. It’s not much in the way of a scarf because he miscalculated and made it too short to loop around his neck multiple times therefore rendering it inadequate in the face of biting winds. 

So he makes a third scarf. It’s a light yellow and a dark purple because he ran out of yellow yarn a third of the way through. It’s not lumpy but it _is_ ugly because yellow and purple don’t complement each other very well. He should’ve picked a different color. 

It’s also ugly because he messed up the stitching pattern and didn’t catch it until much later by which point any attempts at fixing them would mean completely destroying the scarf. So he let it be. 

It’s an ugly scarf, but it’s cozy and warm and actually long enough to loop around his neck, so he wears it one morning when heading to practice. 

“Did you make that, Tobio?” Romero asks delightedly as Tobio sets his bag down. 

“Yes,” Tobio says. “It took me three tries. I like it.”

He starts a fourth scarf on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. He’s bought dark green yarn. He wants to try adding tassels to the ends. 

Yachi calls him as the sun starts to set right after he’s put away the yarn and the needles for the day. “Do you want to hang out next weekend?” she asks. 

“Who else is coming?”

“What?” she asks. “Tadashi and Tsukki, of course.”

“Okay,” Tobio says. “I’ll see you then.”

  
  
  


Tobio finishes his scarf by the time the next weekend rolls around. Some of the tassels are uneven and there’s a few misplaced stitches, but all in all, he thinks it looks good. Impressive, even. And it only took him four tries. 

“Oh, look at my scarf,” Tobio says when he meets up with his friends. “I made it.”

He looks at Tsukishima. The light glares off of his glasses; his eyes are concealed. “Cool,” he says. Tobio’s heart thunders in his chest. 

_Cool_ , he says, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Tobio wants to punch him square in the mouth. And then kiss it. 

  
  


The food is good. The dinner is not. 

He somehow gets stuck with the worst pieces of meat, all gristle and much too chewy. He spills sake down his chin. He drops a piece of meat into his lap. Tsukishima isn’t talking to him. Yamaguchi and Yachi are staring at each other with the type of smile that only love struck fools can have. They’re going to move in together soon, they announce. 

Oh, Tobio thinks, and looks at Tsukishima. 

Tsukishima is sitting next to him, with his blond eyelashes and his lopsided smile and his diamond jaw. He does not look back. 

  
  


Tobio walks the three of them to the station that evening after their stomachs are stuffed and their heads are buzzing. If Yamaguchi or Yachi noticed any lingering awkwardness in the air between him and Tsukishima, they politely refrained from commenting on it. 

“You’ve got some wasabi on your sweater.”

Tobio jolts in surprise at Tsukishima’s voice. “Oh,” he says dumbly. There is indeed wasabi on his sweater. He wipes it off. 

“There’s a smudge on your glasses,” Tobio says. He wonders if this is how all of their future conversations will go, with them pointing out little pieces of each other that are out of place. Tobio thinks all of him is out of place, what with Tsukishima crushing his heart in his fist and all. He wonders if Tsukishima has noticed, if he’ll point it out. 

“I know,” Tsukishima says. “My shirt fabric isn’t soft enough to clean it. It’ll just spread the smudge around.”

Tobio looks down at his sweater. It’s soft and smooth and probably good enough to clean glasses with. “You can use my sweater.”

Tsukishima spares him a glance. “Okay.”

His glasses come off. Tobio wants to kiss his eyelids. 

Tsukishima pinches the hem of his sweater in between two slender fingers, red and trembling from the chilled night air. Wipes. The glasses fit neatly back onto his face. “Thanks.” His teeth are chattering. 

Tobio hums. Wants to break those glasses and look into Tsukishima’s paralyzing lightning eyes and touch his eyelashes. Wants to say, _fuck you_ and _I like you so goddamn much_ and _I never want to see you again_. 

“Take my scarf,” he says instead. The fabric falls off his shoulders. “You’re freezing.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re _freezing_.” Tsukishima is stupid. Why did Tobio even like him in the first place?

He steps closer and slides the scarf around Tsukishima’s shoulders. Tucks it under his shivering chin, flush against his nape. His cheeks and nose are stained a frosty red. “You should’ve brought a sweater.”

“I didn’t check the weather in Tokyo,” Tsukishima says. He tucks his chin down into the scarf. Tobio’s heart stutters in his chest before he can chastise it. “I dressed for Sendai weather.”

“You’re so stupid.”

Tsukishima looks at him through his blond eyelashes. Looks at him like _he’s_ the stupid one. 

He probably is. 

  
  
  
  
  


**MAY 2017**

He’s throwing up on Tsukishima’s kitchen floor. 

“Holy shit,” says Yamaguchi. 

“Did someone throw up?” asks Hinata from Yamaguchi’s phone. He is still in Brazil. 

“Kageyama,” Yamaguchi says. 

“Kageyama,” Tsukishima says. “Come on. Let’s get you to the bathroom.”

Tobio pukes into the toilet and lets Tsukishima rub gentle circles into his back. He pukes again and lets him wipe his face down with a warm, damp washcloth. 

“I’m sorry,” he says when he’s finally stopped spilling his guts out. “I’m sorry. I’ve ruined everything.”

“You just drank too much,” Tsukishima says softly, like he’s talking to a scared kitten. “It happens.”

No, it doesn’t, he wants to say. _This_ doesn’t happen to everyone. Not everyone falls in love with a blond beanpole with a shard of glass for a tongue and a razor for a jawline and and forked lightning for eyes. 

Tsukishima runs the wet cloth against his face when he starts crying. “It’s okay,” he says softly. Tobio wants to throw up again. Why is Tsukishima being so nice? It’s like he _wants_ Tobio to—

“Why don’t you like me?” he asks. Tsukishima’s hand stills. “I want you to like me.” His words come out of their own accord. He’s drunk out of his mind and his self-control has taken a nosedive off a steep cliff. 

“You’re okay,” Tsukishima says. It’s not a response. The flat of his hand is warm against Tobio’s back. “You’re okay.”

Tobio dry heaves. Clutches the rim of the toilet bowl. “Shit,” he croaks. “Fuck.”

  
  
  


Tobio is in his apartment a few days later with Tsukishima standing at his doorstep when he cries again, this time furious and relieved and confused all at once. It’s dizzying and disorienting, and he’s only distantly aware of Tsukishima’s hands in his, on his jaw, in his hair, but hyperaware to the point of being burnt alive from the inside out of Tsukishima being _rightherewithhim_ , and he slots his face into the crook of Tsukishima’s neck and cries. 

The conversation, whittled down to its bare bones, goes like this:

_I like you, too_ , Tsukishima says. _I just got scared_.

 _What the fuck_ , Tobio says. _I cried over you_ . _What’s wrong with you?_

 _I’m sorry_ , Tsukishima says. _I shouldn’t have hurt you like that. I’m sorry._

A beat. More tears. And then:

 _Okay_ , Tobio says. _Okay. I forgive you._

  
  
  


So they decide to do things properly. 

_Properly_ does not mean flowers or teddy bears or heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. Of course not. 

_Properly_ means texting each other _good morning_ and _I’m coming to Tokyo next weekend_ and _this cat looks like you_ . It means tangling their fingers together and shying away from paparazzi and helping each other peel back all those calloused, hardened layers of _feardoubtinsecurity_ and melting into each other’s soft flesh. 

It means—

“Kiss me,” Tsukishima says, eyes dark, chest heaving, cheeks flushed. 

“Oh.” Tobio looks at blond eyelashes—

“ _Please_.”

—and into amber eyes—

“Yeah.”

—and kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! I hope you all enjoyed that. this is my first completed hq fic, and I wanted to try out a new writing style, so it might be a bit rough around the edges.  
> I wrote this whole thing in pretty much four consecutive hours and then edited it very slowly over the course of a few days (and added another 1k or so) and then didn't touch it for several days before adding another 500 words. I hope the ending doesn't seem rushed.
> 
> i'd love it if ppl commented and let me know what they thought! and hmu on [twitter](https://twitter.com/halfmoonslices)


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